How To Braid A 6 Strand Rope With A Core

My last Friday Arts Friday post I had many comments on how to braid a lead rope. So while I worked on my latest one I decided to take a video and so you can see the technique.

The best braids are made out of cord and for beginners the easiest cord to work with is nylon parachute cord. For the project you are seeing in the video below I’m using 100% baby alpaca cord. If you’re interested, I can make cord out of your own alpaca yarn, email me for pricing info. To see or purchase the finished product in this tutorial click here.

When you are braiding round braids you’ll want a core to braid around to help keep the shape of the braid and give it some “meat” in your hands when holding on to it. Otherwise you’re braiding a tube which will deflate when you hold onto it. It also prevents the finished project from stretching out and gives it strength. Since the core is not visible it can be of any material you want, I opted to use some scrap acrylic.

Now you have to figure out the length and affix your core around the end snap. My core is made from 16 feet of chunky acrylic yarn fed through the snap and then twisted into cord to a length of 6.5 feet. I hate getting to the end of a braid just to find out I don’t have enough cord for the length I want so my rule of thumb to find the length of my strands is to double the length of my core. So you’re thinking; ok 6 foot leash doubled = (6) 12 foot strands? WRONG! We want a snap at the end of our leash which means we need (3) 24 foot strands folded in half with the snap in the center.

I’ve never been able to learn how to braid by reading so instead of describing it, I’ll let the video do the visual babble for me. If you have any questions feel free to ask away.

I am having a hard time breaking this down. Do you know of any books or something written on the web that shows how to braid 6 strands with a core? i am trying to braid 6 speaker wires this way. Any help on how I could get something written with drawings would be great. 🙂

Thank you for the video. I am a visual learner too. Actually I prefer to have the teacher sitting right next to me but video is nice too. I think it’s great that you will make the rope out of people’s alpaca. I might have to send you some of mine.